East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Meddling

You know that sensation, when you are reading a book and you are one one hand completely captivated by the story and by the author’s technique and on the other hand you are saying to yourself “Damn! I wish I had written this!”
It happens to me sometimes.More often than one would expect. I guess it’s because I always read cool books.

The last time it happened with Lavie Tidhar’s Central Station, and right now is happening with Edgar Cantero’s horror/comedy Meddling Kids.
That not only is a great book, written in a highly imaginative and original language, and not only is the sort of story I wish I could write.
It’s a book that appears to have been written for me.
I am the target audience.
And I am a happy guy.
I mean, a story referencing Scooby Doo, and It and H.P. Lovecraft?
At the same time a comedy and a pretty tough, ’80s-style horror?

Here’s the ad copy…

SUMMER 1977. The Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in Oregon’s Zoinx River Valley) solved their final mystery and unmasked the elusive Sleepy Lake monster—another low-life fortune hunter trying to get his dirty hands on the legendary riches hidden in Deboën Mansion. And he would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids.

1990. The former detectives have grown up and apart, each haunted by disturbing memories of their final night in the old haunted house. There are too many strange, half-remembered encounters and events that cannot be dismissed or explained away by a guy in a mask. And Andy, the once intrepid tomboy now wanted in two states, is tired of running from her demons. She needs answers. To find them she will need Kerri, the one-time kid genius and budding biologist, now drinking her ghosts away in New York with Tim, an excitable Weimaraner descended from the original canine member of the club. They will also have to get Nate, the horror nerd currently residing in an asylum in Arkham, Massachusetts. Luckily Nate has not lost contact with Peter, the handsome jock turned movie star who was once their team leader . . . which is remarkable, considering Peter has been dead for years.

The time has come to get the team back together, face their fears, and find out what actually happened all those years ago at Sleepy Lake. It’s their only chance to end the nightmares and, perhaps, save the world.

I’ll write more about this baby as soon as I’m finished with it (soon, by the way it’s going).